10

January

Glasgow office market smashes take-up records

Glasgow’s office occupier market posted its most active year since records began, with over 1.4m sq ft of city centre space leased in 2018, reports JLL.

In the final quarter 232,730 sq ft was transacted in Glasgow’s city centre, taking total take-up for the year to 1,425,419 sq ft – an increase of 127% compared with the final year-end take up of 627,313 sq ft in 2017.

JLL said the final total is more than double the city’s five and10-year averages.

JLL said it had advised on just over 1m sq ft of the total volume transacted in 2018 and was involved in four of the top five largest deals. It said last year’s levels will be tough to repeat in 2019 “in part due to Brexit uncertainty and the continued lack of office supply and speculative development”.

Alistair Reid, director at JLL in Glasgow, said: “Last year’s success will be difficult to replicate over the next 12 months given the unique circumstances which led to this record breaking year. Most of the year’s largest deals were prelets and the Barclays transaction of nearly half a million sq ft made such a significant impact on the take-up figures. 2018 was a stellar year for the city and even if the major prelet deals such as Barclays and HMRC are removed from the figures, 2018’s year-end total is still ahead of the five year average.

“Clearly there are concerns within the market over the uncertain economic environment in 2019 and how this could impact upon occupier’s decisions. However, the continued limited speculative development and overall supply should reward those developers and landlords who are brave enough to press on with their projects.”